Tech project weekend (Arch Linux and Awesome Window Manger)...

As a Dad and Husband with a house and yard and growing chore list I don't get as many opportunities to "tech out" on the weekends or evenings as I used to. But my kids are busy at sleepovers and with friends and the grass is wet... so I decided to take that as an opportunity to do some Linux experimentation.

I've been wanting to give Arch Linux a look again as well as experiment with some of these new (to me) "tiling" window managers like Awesome and i3.  I started out with a couple of youtube tutorials and then jumped in with the Arch Linux Install guide and Wiki and a Virtualbox VM.  So far it's going really well and definitely reminds me of the (really) old days with Slackware. Creating partitions manually, creating filesystems, chroot'ing into a mounted build. Definitely not like an Ubuntu or Fedora install but that was not what I was after, I've done hundreds of those.  No, my goal is to build a lightning fast, completely custom workstation for my precise needs.  I want a workstation for programming, reading mail, irc, and network management that will be heavy on terminal usage but has the ability to do other things.  Number one priority is speed and customization!

Arch Linux is really impressing me once again.  I experimented with it several years ago but at the time I wasn't really looking for the speed and customization.  I was after quick and easy and over in 10 minutes. Arch isn't like that, it tweaks your geek, it makes you want to create partitions, lay down filesystems, tweak fstabs, troubleshoot Grub... (for hours).  It's powerful, fast, and when done, you feel like you have been a partner in creating something, not just punching an install button!

I'll post some screenshots later...

Thanks!